Site Improvement

Even though we struggle with the concept of data center efficiency, there have been great attempts to evaluate this elusive, magical term. For example, I can measure the energy in and the energy rejected and thereby calculate the amount of energy used. I can even tell how much of this energy was used by the data processing equipment specifically. What I cannot tell, however, is the efficiency of the data center – the ratio of how much work was performed as related to the energy used. I can tell that the data center used 8 megawatts in a month; but since I can’t relate that to the amount of work that was done, I simply can’t measure the data center’s efficiency. The problem stems from how you measure data center “work.” So what does a data center do? If you ask people, you get a myriad of answers. The CFO’s perspective is that it’s the amount of money (revenue – costs) that you get from the operation of the data center. The CIO’s viewpoint is it’s the amount of data that is received, sent, processed, and stored. The engineer looks at it as the amount of total energy used for IT equipment versus that used for other functions. In a sense, they’re all correct. They each have their responsibilities and perspectives about what the data center is supposed to deliver....

An operator at a critical facility entered the electrical distribution room. He started to isolate a part of the system for a routine maintenance in accordance with an approved procedure. When he actually turned the switch to isolate the system, a major portion of the facilities power was lost with a large portion of the supported customers. It was determined afterward that the operator actually entered the wrong distribution room, shutting down power to the wrong part of the facility. At a nuclear power plant, an operator following an approved procedure to perform maintenance on some instrumentation caused the reactor to scram, shutting down the plant. The operator mistakenly hooked up a test signal to the wrong instrumentation causing a power spike to be seen by the protective circuitry, causing the shutdown. Each of these incidents was caused by confusing labeling — the first by two identical electrical distribution rooms next to each other with very small labeling, the second by labeling that made it difficult to tell which system it belonged to. I have seen companies spend enormous time and effort on the design, procedures, and training; but when it came to labeling, almost no thought or effort was made in this area to eliminate risk. Labeling and system identification should be addressed during the design and construction, but unfortunately so many of our facilities were built without labeling being a priority. Lucky that labeling issues can be easily addressed post construction....